


Our Glory Days Are Numbered

by kay_emm_gee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dust settles in the streets of Liverpool, and Clarke is long gone, but Bellamy keeps her drawing anyways.</p>
<p>{ An AU inspired by Peaky Blinders }</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Glory Days Are Numbered

**Author's Note:**

> I got some strong Tommy x Grace feels last night, and thus this little piece.

The dust settles in the streets of Liverpool, and Clarke is long gone, but Bellamy keeps her drawing anyways.

_The doe-eyed, silver-tongued spy who almost toppled the street king_ , they whisper in half-disgust, half-reverence whenever her name is mentioned in the next few weeks.

Before, before the dust and the battle and the betrayal, men and women alike used to teasingly call her the sweetest barmaid in all of England, whistling at her as she poured drinks with as much precision and skill as he slit throats. Bellamy could still picture the flash of her golden hair as she spun around the bar, serving drinks from the tray cocked at her hip and spinning a web around his heart at the same time. He had thought there was no room for an orphan like her, a soft-hearted girl like her, a good girl like her in his world. His bloody, bruising, rough-and-tumble world of the Delinquents, where greed always pulled at his stomach, for more of what they–the elusive  _they_ , the same ones who had sent boys off to the Great War, not caring they would come back broken men–told him he could never have.

He didn’t think he could have Clarke either, but she hadn’t agreed, perching on a damp bar table one night after closing, sketchpad clutched to her chest, looking at him with eyes bluer than the country sky that stretched carelessly over fields of harvest and fields of war alike, asking if she could draw him.

_A king should have a portrait_ , she had said with a sly smile.

_It isn’t usually a princess who does the favor though,_  he had quipped back, swirling his whiskey glass around absently.

She had just frowned when he spilled some, flinging a rag at him.  _Fucking clean up after yourself, yeah?_

Deep, rough laughter had spilled from his lips, because her sharp words were at odds with her soft curves.  _If Her Highness commands._

Then she put charcoal to paper, and time stopped. Empires could have crumbled, and the sea swallowed every bit of land except that underneath the bar they were shuttered in, and he would never have noticed. It startled him–and not much startled Bellamy Blake, head of the most fearsome gang north of London–when she announced she was done, a bit breathlessly.

It took a minute, because she shone so brightly, for him to ask,  _Well, can I see it?_

_It’s not a happy portrait,_  she warned.

_I’m not a happy man_ , he replied.

That got a smile out of her, though a melancholy one.  _I’m warning you, it’ll break your heart._

Now he realizes nothing had the power to break his heart that night, because she already held the cracked thing between her charcoal-blackened hands.

His own fingertips are darkened these days, these days when he is reconstructing his empire after  _they_  tried to break it, because he can’t help running his fingers along the edge of that damn drawing. The paper bites into his fingertips, threatening to make him bleed. All sharp edges, covered in soft, sketched curves–just like Clarke. She almost made him bleed too, but not in the usual way, the way his enemies always tried with their handmade knives and drawn pistols.

_You’re hurt!_  She exclaimed when he showed up at her door that night when it all went wrong, when everything she really was came to light, with Cage’s blood, and that of so many others, on his hands.

_You lied_ , he said in return, and the hope in her eyes shattered like the glass windows of the bar when his rivals had come to kill him, because he had let her in, into his everything, and she had been working for the other side the whole damn time.

He wanted to make her shatter in other ways, and shudder too, and scream, ever since the first day he had seen her, and with one careless, blue-eyed glance had made him want to throw everything away just to be with her. One night with Clarke was all he had wanted, and it looked like one night was all he was going to get.

They fell into bed not in the way they had fallen together, because that had been a slow seduction, a subtle comment here, a not-so-accidental brush there. On this night of blood and goodbyes, they were a whirlwind, a tempest, a storm in the eye of the inevitable chaos that was separating them. She touched him, and lightning struck, burning him up from the inside out, so that soon enough he was shucking off her clothes as well as his, needing the chill of her ruthless soul to tame the raging fire inside of him. He kissed her, and thunder rumbled, spilling from her swollen lips as he sunk into her, a cry that he had been so desperate to hear all this time: his name on her lips, freely and recklessly called out, for only them to hear.

The fucking joke was it undid him in turn, and he let himself go, losing himself entirely in her, sharp edges and soft curves and all.

_I can’t stay_ , she had said flatly in the quiet aftermath.

_I can’t leave_ , he replied, and it was as simple as that.

They were at the door when her hand came up–her slight, trembling hand that had nonetheless gripped his heart and his world and rendered them both into infinite pieces–and clutched at his shirt.

_I’ll be at this address in London for one week_ , she had said, choking back tears he couldn’t bring himself to wipe away, even though his fingers itched to soothe her sorrow.

_Someday I’ll put my gun in the ground,_  he replied, placing his hand over hers before prying her fingers from his chest.  _But not today._

She wrestled free from his grip–he never had good one on her, it turns out–and clutched his face in her hands, bringing his mouth a breath away from hers.

_Here it comes, Bellamy_ , she whispered.  _I love you_.

Everything went cold inside of him, because he was greedy enough to want those words from her, but unlucky enough to not get to hear them again after tonight.  _And there it goes, Clarke,_  he said, pulling away from her for the last time. _Away it goes._

So weeks later, he sits in the bar, the taste of whiskey and cigarette smoke on his lips–harsh and bitter, nothing like her sweetness–leaning back in his chair as he takes from his pocket the sketch she had made of him on that innocent night in the bar, probably the only true thing she had ever given him.

He is all harsh lines and dark shades in her mind’s eye, seated on a barchair-turned-throne with a gun in his hand and a smile on his face, broad and brash and so bold that you almost don’t notice the panic in his eyes and the chain looped around his feet, binding him in place.

She was wrong. The drawing didn’t break his heart, but he knows now, sitting on his lonely throne, that it broke hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


End file.
